


if you're alive i can wait

by frozennightmare



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, I'm so sorry for this, Multi, it just had to be done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozennightmare/pseuds/frozennightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world hadn’t ended as anyone had hoped, in a quick, overnight flash of terror that relieved the suffering before it could really begin. It is painstakingly slow instead, breeding its terror in those that watch from the other side of the world and await their inevitable deaths.</p>
<p>In short, the world is a sadistic asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're alive i can wait

 

inspired by [this](http://novaspolitan.tumblr.com/post/83150766352/mrsnarvaez-zombie-apocalypse-au-when-michael) and[ this](http://novaspolitan.tumblr.com/post/81334403401/rooferfeef-he-felt-fine)

_______

“How long are you two gonna be gone?”

“A day. Maybe two.”

“Bring bevs.”

“Sure. Whatever. Can I just fucking save all your lives already?” Michael twirls the hilt of his machete dangerously between his fingers. It’s already becoming a habit.

“Michael, wait!” Gavin digs in the mess of his desk, knocking over the Queen with a soft _fuck_ before clumsily tossing him his Colt. It’s dusty, having sat in the the same spot untouched for the past month, safety still on by accident only.

“Why are you giving me your gun, you prick?” It’s probably safer in Michael’s hands than Gavin’s anyways. It’s a miracle he hasn’t accidentally shot himself by now. “I’m armed, remember? I am the Rambo of the motherfucking zombie apocalypse.” He tucks the Colt into the waistband of his faded old jeans and gives his machete another reassuring twirl, glad the office is empty right now.

“Isn’t Lindsay going with you?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not going it alone, I’m not that dumb. But she’s got-”

“A kitchen knife that won’t do shit to zombies. I’m not doing much good with it.” Michael would care to disagree with Gavin there; his fireball best friend is downright dangerous with that thing.

He looks over Gavin’s shoulder through the dingy office window, watching Ray’s purple lump crouched in the courtyard. He took watch a lot, lingering out there with his crossbow leaned against his shoulder and his DS in his pocket, always with a single headphone in so he could hear the zombies he was supposed to be keeping an eye out for. They’d had to shoot a couple so far, but it hadn’t gotten too bad yet. (Best to go on a supply run now before things really went to shit.) Geoff is just visible beyond him, delegating the last of his personal liquor supply with Burnie for what looks like a couple hundred bucks. It’s a symbolic gesture. Who gives a fuck about money anymore?

“What’s wrong, boi?”

“Don’t get yourself killed, you fucking idiot. Just stay with the group, okay? You’ll be fine with them.”

“It’s not like I‘m bloody going anywhere. I’ll just marathon something for a while.”

Michael feels like being an asshole, so he tosses the nearest copy of Left 4 Dead at Gavin.

“Sod off, you prick.” Gavin laughs, but he sets it down on top of his Xbox anyways. Electricity after a month of the apocalypse- that’s another small miracle. Even if no one’s sure how long its going to last.

Lindsay’s waiting for him. He should probably go. But-

It’s nothing. It’s stupid. He needs to get out of here before his head goes on anymore stupid fucking tangents. Tangents like noticing how Gavin keeps trying to fish out the Queen from behind his desk, his jeans sliding off his hipbones as he wriggles. How does he define that man? He’s used to people fitting into their safe little squares: Lindsay, best friend; Ray, brother ; Geoff, crazy boss; Jack, crazy uncle; Ryan, just plain crazy. Gavin is an enigma, an ugly mess who doesn’t fit anywhere. Friend? Family? Guy he made out with that one time? (Except Gavin either doesn’t remember that bit or never talks about it, because they were both drunk as dicks and he’s never brought it up.) There has always been a definite air of _what if_ about them, for all of Geoff’s joking about it, but he’s never had the guts to do a damn thing about it.

_It’s the end of the fucking world, you asshole. Say something._

And he opens his mouth to do it, but then Lindsay marches in like she owns the place (she does) and his tongue catches squarely in his throat.  “I’m taking this asshole.” she commands.

Gavin descends from atop his desk, the Queen in hand, still utterly oblivious to the mental war that rages in his head. “Bye, you prick.”

“Yeah, fuck you too.”

o0o0o0o

The world hadn’t ended as anyone had hoped, in a quick, overnight flash of terror that relieved the suffering before it could really begin. It is painstakingly slow instead, breeding its terror in those that watch from the other side of the world and await their inevitable deaths.

In short, the world is a sadistic asshole.

Burnie hears about the virus first and mentions it as a joking aside on the podcast, turning it into a long-winded fight about various zombie pantheons. There’s jokes for weeks about what it actually is. Officials refuse to touch the “z-word” and talk about mass hysteria all the fucking time, claiming it’s a perfectly controllable known disease. The in-office jokes get even more long-winded, with Geoff declaring it “zombie week” while they debate the number of ways they might end up eating each other.

Then the US closes its borders and everything stops being funny.

They lock themselves in the office and try to record as much as possible to keep their minds off the mess outside, but there’s no ignoring it anymore. Despite the border closing, the first documented outbreak shows up in Tennessee about a week later. Burnie calls the entire office- every fucking one of them- into the kitchen five minutes after that news breaks, offering the non-Texans plane tickets back to their families while they can still go.

“Not a chance in hell.” Michael responds, looking at Gavin and Barb, trapped here with them. “This is my family.”

A couple people leave, but for the most part they stay, caught up in horror as the zombie-virus (what’s the point in avoiding the name now) tracks its way across the states. 636 becomes a bunker, a barricade, _home_. With every morning more people are crashing there, preferring the company of their friends over empty apartments. Ray makes an early claim on the office couch and stays there. Despite the obvious apocalypse, the panic is almost nonexistent in Austin. Yes, the stores are almost empty from the start, but the prolonged waiting for something they know is coming forces the looting spirit out of everyone.

Burnie and Gus fill the annex with as much as they can get their hands on. Geoff goes out and buys a couple guns. (Gavin’s Colt is just a foolhardy attempt to give him some protection.) Ray and Michael find their weapons in storage from old shoots. Mentally he’s still handling this like a video game, thinking about the benefits to ammo-less melee weapons. He still has to hack up more than a few props before he even begins to feel comfortable with it. Ray’s odd talent for things seems to roll over into real life, but he’s the exception that proves the rule. Everyone is practicing. Everyone is scared out of their fucking minds.

The infection reaches Texas.

Everything ends.

o0o0o0o

“Hello?”

Thirty-six hours. He was gone thirty-six hours. What shit could have happened in thirty-six hours?

(oh god there are bodies everywhere oh god oh god oh god)

The back door’s open, hanging on a hinge. Behind him, Lindsay cocks the Colt nervously, crouched with the grace of a tiger. He elbows it the rest of the way open and it catches on something soft on the floor- a flash of white-blond hair stained red and a half-eaten face still frozen in a scream.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” he mutters, his grip tightening on his machete as he looks away. “Lindsay, don’t look.”

“Oh, God, who is it?” she asks with a rasp, trying not to look as she steps over the body.

“Kara.” he answers, and then he is sick all over the place like the douchebag he is.

Lindsay doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to not open her mouth, because she’s gonna go right down Michael’s route if she does.

(fuckfuckfuckfuck)

There’s other bodies here, both zombie and friend, and he’s trying really damn hard not to look. “Geoff? Jack? Anybody here?”

“Maybe things got rough and they left.”

“Yeah, maybe.” At least there aren’t any more zombies around- yet. He opens the door to the Achievement Hunter office with his machete all the same.

“Holy shit.”

They’ve cleared out, it’s gone, all of it. All the picture frames are empty, every shelf bare, even Gavin’s disgusting desk is finally clean. It feels like a fucking tomb in here.

“Michael.” Lindsay taps him on the shoulder while he stands there, still frozen to the spot. She points at a square of white paper on his empty desk.

_Michael there were zombies everywhere and i’m so fucking scared geoff says we gotta get out of here i think griffon’s dead i don’t know they were everywhere boi please be okay please come back and save all our lives because i don’t know where anyone is it’s just me and geoff and jack and ray and ryan and i’m really scared_

_please don’t be dead_

_please_

_we’re going towards dallas. i think. i’m not sure. come find me please ~~i need you~~ im sorry come find me_

“Fuck.”

“Where are they?”

“Towards Dallas. I think. Gavin was pretty panicky. Lindsay, we gotta find them.”

“Yeah.” she says shakily. “Yeah, we do.”

o0o0o0o

“I want to get off ground level.” Geoff orders, scanning the alley with every movement. He’s gotten suddenly sharper, taking every corner pistol-first and issuing orders in such a calm, commanding voice that it’s almost instinctual to obey. “We don’t have any kind of vantage point here.”

“Yeah, but anywhere we go could be flooded with zombies. At least here they’re avoiding us.” Ryan argues. How can he be so calm? Even Ray is panicking.

“Up there?” Gavin jumps toward a fire escape, scoping out a seemingly-empty apartment. It’s starting to get dark, and they can’t afford to be out in the open in a city like this.

“Yes, good plan, you, no. You’re unarmed.” Ray leaps onto the bottom rung, scaling up and kicking open the balcony door at the top.

“What do you see?”

“Three or four, it’s kind of dark up here.”

“Jack, stay with Gavin. Wait a minute, Ray.” Geoff climbs up behind him and fishes a flashlight out of his pocket. “Yeah, I see ‘em. Stay down there while we clear.”

Geoff is a machine, lighting them up right before he blows each head apart. His expression hasn’t twitched since they left the office.

“Gotcha.” Ray nails a zombie shambling out of the bedroom, then chases after it to retrieve his crossbow bolt. It’s dark as dicks in here. The floorboards creak under his feet, whining their way across the room, and then he leans over to pull out the bolt _and they’re still creaking-_

“Holy shit no no no-” Ray screeches at a decibel only heard by dogs while still managing to nail the zombie creeping up on him to the wall.

“Dude, are you dead?”

“I’m fine!” he shrieks.

“You sound about eight years old.”

“Shut the hell up. I am a big boy.”

Geoff almost smiles. Almost. “I think we’re clear in here. Help me block off the door. Hey dicks, come up here!”

Gavin hauls ass up the fire escape first, his only weapon a flashlight. “Do you think Michael will be able to find us up here?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find something to put on the balcony for him.” Jack, two feet behind him, exchanges a glance with Geoff, the kind that says _there’s no way in hell he’ll find us._

“Geoff!” Ryan stops at the edge of the balcony, not even bothering to come inside. “Do you see that?”

“See what?”

He points at a police station halfway down the block. “Maybe we could get some weapons off that.”

“You are thinking like a gamer and I love it.” Geoff grumbles. “You dicks stay put, Ryan and I will be back in a minute.”

“Ok?” Jack doesn’t like the idea of babysitting. Why does this always happen to him?

o0o0o0o

The apartment isn't that bad once they dispose of the bodies. A little dingy, yeah, but everyone's standards are lower in the apocalypse. Gavin evokes the sacred rule of dibs on the couch and crashes faster than should be physically possible.

“He realizes they’re only gonna be gone for twenty minutes, right?” Jack sighs.

“Fink so.” Ray mumbles through a mouthful of doritos.

“Where’d you get those?”

“Pantry. Processed food never goes bad, right?”

Jack sighs.

“Hwat?”

“Sometimes I forget I work with a bunch of twentysomething bachelors.”

“Hey, I gat doritoos an you don’t.”

He gives up and digs through the dead people muck until he finds a couple candles. The wires in here have been gnawed through by mice. No more miracle electricity for them.

“Who’s your date?” Gavin- or the hoodie lump that was Gavin- mutters from the couch.

(since michael’s not here, somebody has to be a right prick until he comes back, he thinks)

“Me, obviously.” Ray replies with a cheesy grin, but Jack isn’t listening to either of them. He picks up his shotgun from where he leaned it against the kitchen counter. Out on the fire escape is the soft clink of somebody climbing up, but it’s all wrong, too slow and too heavy.

“C’mon, Ryan, almost there.”

“Got it.” he hisses, falling off the top rung of the ladder and onto the balcony floor. Jack dashes out as soon as he lands, shotgun aimed at a nowhere point at the bottom of the ladder. “What happened? Everyone okay?”

“Got bit.” Ryan can hardly speak from the pain he’s in, and Jack drops his shotgun to haul him inside. “Gavin, move your ass!”

“Huh? Oh, Christ. Ryan? You okay?”

“Will be.” he manages. His hand is still held tight over a sticky patch at the base of his neck.

“It came out of fucking nowhere.” Geoff half-explains, pulling Ryan’s hand away to look at the bite clearly. It’s an ugly, half-clotted mess, with the veins around it pulsing a thick black. “Shot the bastard though.”

“He’s gonna be fine, right?” Gavin retreats deeper into his hoodie, clutching his arms together and staring out from beneath the gray with wide eyes. “I mean, Gus got bit, but he was fine.”

“He lost half his fucking leg, Gav. We can’t cut off Ryan’s neck.” Ray barely makes a sound, his voice shaking a little bit.

“It’ll be fi-augh.” Ryan’s attempt to reassure them gets caught off in a convulsed scream. “FUCK! Fuck, I’m on fire!”

Jack looks at Geoff and hands him his shotgun.

“No. Fuck no.”

“We have to.”

“I can’t kill my-” His voice cracks midsentence.  “-my friend.”

“If we don’t, he turns, painfully and slowly. And then we have to kill him anyways.”

“Oh God.” Ray puts his hands over his eyes, and the way he says sounds more like a desperate prayer than an exasperated exclamation.

Geoff picks up the shotgun.

“No, no you can’t-” Gavin shouts. He wants to scream out, to fight back, but his fear has him too firmly rooted to the spot to move.

“It’s ok, Gav, it’s ok.” Ryan grabs onto the arm of the couch and tries to sit up. “I’m dead no matter what, eh? Just don’t watch.”

The one thing Gavin can even do is close his eyes.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” Geoff’s hands are shaking around the trigger.

“Just tell my wife I love her.” Ryan’s lost his moment of coherency, devolving back into pained shaking. “I love her, okay? Tell her I-”

Jack’s been shooting that thing all day but to Gavin it has never sounded louder.

o0o0o0o

“Hey, asshole!” Lindsay’s quite good at getting his attention, even at six in the morning. They had stopped for the night in an old motel, switching shifts uncomfortably so they wouldn’t die. Sleep deprived and dangerous. How else does one participate in the apocalypse?

“What?”

“Isn’t that Ray’s hoodie?” She aims her flashlight at a purple lump thrown over a fire escape.

“Knew he’d leave a sign for me.” Michael grins, but acts like a gentleman and lets Lindsay climb up first.

“I hate the apocalypse.” she huffs. “I haven’t exercised this much in months.”

He grins stupidly. (i’ve got the best friend in the universe)

A moment after she disappears into the cracked screen door, he hears her scream.

All happiness is gone in that instant; he’s Michael the machine, almost flying up the ladder with his machete in hand. “Lindsay? LINDSAY!”

“I’m okay!” she shouts, but her voice is wobbly and wet.

“Oh, _fuck_ , Ryan, no.” He drags Lindsay into his chest so she doesn’t have to look at it- hell, he doesn’t want to look at it. He does his best to turn away his eyes and keep himself in one piece, but it’s fucking hard. It’s really fucking hard.

Find something to look at. Doritos bag. Ray, definitely. White paper. _Oh._

_ryan got bit and geoff had to shoot him i think i’ve been sick ten times tonight you’ve got to get here michael we’ll be dead in a week without mogar_

_hurry michael i’m gonna start running out of clothing to leave ~~i need you~~ fuck we really need you i miss you please dont be dead i dont want everyone to be dead_

_i dont know where we're going i wish i did but i have no idea and i dont think geoff knows either so just look for the nearest liquor store? you still owe me bevs_

~~_i need you so much please_ ~~

“We need to keep moving, the zombies can probably smell this.” Lindsay says quietly. “Do you- do you know where they are?”

He doesn’t know anymore than the first time she asked. Hell, if they find Gavin at all, it’ll be out of sheer fucking luck.

“I don’t.”

“Well then let’s go.” she says, and thank God for Lindsay and her ability to pull him out of the ditch.

o0o0o0o

They could have stopped three blocks back, or three miles, and been just as safe there. Are they moving just to move at this point? Ray is confused and tired and cold, he surrendered his hoodie on the hopes that Gavin’s _boytoy_ would come back. How do they even know Michael’s alive? They fucking don’t, that’s how.

“Geoff, we gotta stop. We can find a safehouse tomorrow, look, there was that hotel just a block back-” Even Jack is thinking it. Geoff is a machine at this point. Is this is what he’s like sober? Because it’s terrifying.

“Yeah. Great. Sure.”

“When we get there, I order you to sleep. I’ll-”

“I’ll take first watch.” Ray cuts in. “Not gonna sleep anyways.”

“Thanks, kid.” Geoff mumbles.

Gavin plays with something around his neck as he walks, his arms still held fast across his chest.

“Hey, Vav. How’s it going?” Fuck whoever invented small talk. It’s stupid and foolish; they’ve lost too much today for it to mean anything and yet he’s still doing it.

“I’m useless.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, Ray, I fucking am. I’m unarmed, I’m hapless, helpless, clumsy, idiotic- the only reason I’m still alive right now is because so many other people are dead.”

“Ryan wasn’t your fault, you had nothing to do with that!”

“Yeah, but Griffon? Chris? Kara? They were all trying to get me out of there-”

“They were trying to save their own skins more than you. Stop blaming yourself for things that weren’t your fault.” He makes a mental note to tell Jack that Gavin needs to be forced to sleep too.

The hotel’s all right, the zombies are a mild nuisance- _horde mode must not be turned on yet_ , Ray jokes, and it’s only a little funny.

Ray finds his perch out by the algae-covered pool behind the hotel. He slings his crossbow over his lap as he sits on top of the wall separating the hot tub from the pool, kicking his checkered shoes against the brick over and over again, waiting for a speck of movement to catch his eye. He has no worries about falling asleep. It’s damn cold, and _somebody stole his hoodie._

Something scurries around the bushes creeping in through the broken part of the fence. Ray gets down more out of curiosity than anything else, leaving his crossbow on the wall. It’s too small to be a zombie. Anyways, that’s only three feet away.

“Huh.” A couple of sad roses are blooming on the bushes, dropping petals onto the ground where he’d seen the thing move. A couple kicks at the bush’s base and he sees the body the rat-or-mouse-or-whatever had been chewing on.

(that’s a whole new breed of nasty)

He leans over the body, brushing the rose petals off the nasty mess of the face to see if he might know-

_snap_

_crackle_

_boom_

.

.

.

.

“No, wait, what are you doing? Shit!”

“I’m killing walkers! Saving humanity!”

“That wasn’t a zombie,you fuck. Shit. Shit. Oh my God, what the fuck, have you done?”

“He was going through a body. It was an honest mistake!”

“Shit. Shit. If he has anybody with him, we are fucked. Fucked to Mars and back.”

“Maybe we’re lucky and he’s alone. Nobody’s come running yet, huh? Help me dump it.”

“Where are we gonna put it?”

“Just throw it in the pool!”

_splash_

“Let’s go, let’s go,let’s go-”

“No, wait, take his crossbow, you’re almost out of bullets.”

“LET’S GO-”

.

.

.

.

.

.

“Ray? Ray, where’d you go, you prick? I’m not gonna make you stay up all night, lemme take watch.”

.

.

.

“Ray?”

o0o0o0o

“What are we following now, Michael? The notes or a body trail?”

“I don’t know. Fuck! Look at that, Lindsay, that wasn’t a zombie, that was some asshole human being, and I swear to God if I ever find out who did it-”

“Michael.”

“I will tear their fucking limbs off and feed them, piece by piece, to the nearest horde. And if I can’t find one-”

“ _Michael!_ ” She shoves him into the bush with her elbow, pushing her way in front of him and emptying her clip into the zombie he’d been completely oblivious to. Every bit of air and anger in his body are pulled out into Lindsay’s vacuum, and even after it’s down she just keeps shooting, _boom-boom-boom-_

“Lindsay, you’re wasting ammo, Lindsay, stop-”

She doesn’t stop until the gun is empty, and then she stares at it with shaky eyes before throwing it across the concrete floor and collapsing to her knees. “I got scared. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok. How’s- how’s your ammo?”

Lindsay checks the inside pocket of her jacket. “Getting kind of low. Can I have the Sig?”

“No,no, we’ll find you some more ammo.”

“Just give me the gun.”

“I’m saving it for Gavin.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He’s clutching onto the latest letter like it’s a lifeline, noticing every grunge-stain and maybe bloodstain.

(please don’t let that be blood)

_his eyes were so white so white so white michael help me please i need you why havent you found us yet im still alive i promise are you? im scared im soscaredimsososcared please i ~~love~~ need you i dont care if youre a zombie or not_

Michael probably shouldn’t worry so much about holding on to the Sig; any logic dictates he got Ryan’s shotgun. But he’s not sure, and he’s not exactly in a state to think logically.

o0o0o0o

Not all the people Geoff aims his pistol at are dead.

Today there’s a blonde here- Barbara in a bloodied sweater, her hands still gripped too tightly around her pistol long after Geoff drops his. She trades it eventually for a spot at their trash-heap fire and a cup of coffee that Gavin manages to flash into being. (His secret: he raided the Starbucks halfway down the road. He may not be able to defend himself for shit, but Gavin can get in and out of places scarily well.)

“How long have you been alone?” Geoff asks her casually. Too casually.

“Couple of hours.” Gavin wonders how they arrived here; how the conversation about dead friends that he knows is coming has become a commonplace. “I was with Burnie, Gus, and Brandon. We were doing pretty good.”

“Even with Gus?”

“Burnie had to keep carrying him around, but he was the most cheerful of all of us. Kept calling himself the King.” Her hands are jittering around her coffee cup, smile oddly out of place in the story. “Every time he got too annoying Burnie would threaten to make him walk, and they’d argue for half an hour over who was maimed and who was fat.”

“Gus the most cheerful? That’s a fucking shock. Didn’t know it was possible. What happened?”

Her hands shake even more, sloshing the coffee over the edge and adding tawny stains to the red ones on her sweater. “There’s a horde about three miles east. And I mean by that, a whole fuckton of zombies eating on each other and anything that happens to get in their way. We stumbled into it by accident. Burnie-Burnie gave us Gus and told us to get out of there, he-” She cuts off for a second to collect herself. “We found a warehouse, but the horde was following us. Had to lock ourselves in. There’s food for weeks. I-I-I-”

Gavin curls his hand around hers, trying to calm her down enough so she can speak.

“I got scared, okay? I panicked. Crawled out the HVAC, and as soon as I was gone I wanted to go back but there were zombies everywhere so I couldn’t get back in and I just ran-”

Gavin pulls the coffee out of her hands and pulls her into his shoulder, but his eyes are still just as wide and frightened as Barbara’s.

Geoff watches for a second and then pulls Jack aside. “If that horde’s still out there, we are grade-A fucked.”

“I know. We need to avoid it.”

“We need Michael. We need those backup weapons he was getting- hell, I’d just like that kid’s berserker mode on my side. We are low on ammo, low on food, low on fucking everything.”

“Do you really think he’s still alive?”

“I don’t know, but if he is, we need to keep Gavin alive. No matter what. He won’t help us if something’s happened to him, and I don’t want to be on that kid’s bad side.”

“Agreed. Gavin’s the priority.” Jack looks back at the scruffy-haired man trying to comfort Barbara, looking more like a frightened child than an adult with a handful of clever zombie kills to his name. (window pane, fire extinguisher, encyclopedia; you put a guy in enough tight spots and he’ll get smart to save his own life.) “No matter what.”

o0o0o0o

In the many, many zombie games he’s played, the apocalypse is always dark as fuck. It’s either night or dirty or rainy or bloody, pick an aesthetic and you’re probably right. Yet the real thing is bizarre in that the world appears to keep spinning just fine. It’s been blisteringly hot and sunny, a beautiful day by most Texan accounts, and the zombies keep rambling. Tonight, with all the lights out in Austin, he can see for what feels like miles. It’s beautiful.

The real thing is both better and worse than his imaginings.

Lindsay shifts, having fallen asleep on his lap. He doesn’t have any desire to move her. This is the first time she’s slept well in- hell, who cares, it’s been a long fucking time.

He doesn’t know how he feels anymore. All his perfect little boxes are broken. There are x’s where Ray’s and Ryan’s used to be, a sharp cage over Geoff as he goes from _crazy boss_ to _military badass_ (he shot Ryan _how_ ). Gavin’s is even more of a mess than it used to be, a light at the end of the tunnel. He doesn’t know how he’ll react when he finally finds them. The opinion is currently stuck squarely between kissing him until he can’t breathe and handcuffing him to his arm so he can’t run away again. It’s a fucking mess.

_A light at the end of the tunnel_ , fucking hell. He knows full well the gilded fucking pedestal he’s currently sitting the former _what-if_ on and couldn’t be forced to give less of a shit about it. Hell, he needs a little hope somewhere.

Lindsay’s box has gotten shaky as well. He can no longer define her either, but he knows at the base of it all is an undefinable _need._ Doing this without her would be pointless. Hell, Michael wouldn’t last five minutes. He needs her to stay alive, needs that stupid sassy redheaded protection machine. (well, it’s not quite red anymore) He plays with it absentmindedly, trying to hide the brown roots coming through.

“Wassgoinon?” she mumbles.

“Go back to sleep.” he mutters, and kisses her head, and it’s as natural as messing with Gavin’s hair between video takes.

“Mmkay.”

(you are a mess, michael jones. a fucking mess.)

o0o0o0o

“Fuck.”

“I told you there was a horde out here.” Barbara stops field-stripping her pistol for the eighteenth time while Geoff leans out over the balcony. Apartment-crashing has worked more the second time around, if only for a couple weeks.

_“Fuck.”_

“If it’s that far out, we can run from it.” Gavin sighs. Ever since Barbara taught him how to take apart Ryan’s gun, he’s been doing it non-stop as well, even though the ammo for it is long gone.

“Maybe for a little bit.” Barbara still seems oddly calm. “But it’s like trying to outrun a sandstorm. You just have to find somewhere to hunker down and let it pass.”

“Then let’s just stay where we are.” Jack says.

“Not gonna work. They’ll come straight up those stairs, your barricade will be nothing. We need something secure. Ground-level.”

“We could lock ourselves in those dumpsters down on 3rd.” Gavin suggests, and all three of his companions stop to stare at him with a variation of _you idiot._

“No, wait, think about it!” he argues. “We’ve never once seen a zombie go through one of those things; they’re not interested in that kind of waste. And the smell would hide us.”

“Gavin, did you just come up with a good idea?” Geoff asks incredulously, and Barbara makes a face. “Death or garbage that’s been rotting for four months. It’s not a great plan. I thought you were the squeamish one?”

“Yeah, but it’ll work, innit?”

“Alright, let’s go.” Jack grabs his shotgun. “We need to beat the horde there.”

It takes twenty minutes for them to dismantle the furniture barricade in front of the door, and by then the horde is dangerously close. They abandon silence and sneaking and fucking book it.

“Get off of me, you mingy smegpot!” Gavin squawks,making up words in a panic and dislodging a wayward zombie hand from his foot. Geoff turns around and starts running backwards as he fires, picking off the fringes of the undead amoeba.

“Almost there!” Jack shouts, downright hauling ass. It’s run or die now, and he prays to God that Gavin’s stupid idea actually works.

“Fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you-” Geoff mutters as he shoots. Barbara, getting overexcited, turns around to jeer at them as well-

and trips over her own feet with a horrified screech.

“BARB!” Gavin lunges out to grab her, but Jack scoops him up from behind, dragging him away from the horde clustering around his friend-

“NO-FUCK-WE HAVE TO GO BACK-BARB-”

Jack clocks him with the barrel of his shotgun and throws his unconscious body in the dumpster after Geoff.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“You killed Barb.” are the first words out of Gavin’s mouth when he wakes up. And he’s not wrong, but Geoff can’t let him know that for a second. It would ruin everything- Gavin would run away and be dead in a heartbeat, and then they’d all be fucked.

“I’m sorry, buddy. She was already gone. Jack was just trying to save you.”

“Jack. Where is he?”

“Went a mile and a half to take a piss. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a zombie free zone to piss in? Fucking impossible. He'll probably be gone a while longer.”

“At least it’ll be easy for Michael to find us now. He just follows the biggest gathering of zombies in the universe.”

“Sure, kid.” Damn, his faith is impressive. He hears Jack rustling around in the alley behind him, finally stumbling back. “Dude, what the hell took you so long?”

Jack doesn’t respond, but Gavin doesn’t make a jump for the nearest weapon, so it must be Jack just fucking with him. That’d be a nice change.

“Jack?”

Gavin shrieks.  Geoff moves.

Jack’s eyes are faded to a pale white, skin hanging off his ankle as he stumbles through the alleyway. He’s not all the way gone, not yet, but it’s far enough to want to rip Geoff apart.

(he said his ankle hurt he must have been bit and not realized it-)

Geoff freezes, his hands moving for a gun without any real attempt to grab one. “Hey, Jack, it’s me.” he stumbles. “It’s Geoff, hey, snap out of it, it’s me, Jack-JACK-”

_boom_

_boom_

_boom_

_boom._

Gavin drops the gun like he’s picked up a hot coal and folds into himself, rocking back and forth. Geoff doesn’t notice; he’s still frozen, staring at the body that was Jack ten minutes ago.

(youshotjackyoushotjackyoushotshotshhotsshsshot- you shot you shot you shot-)

He has one piece of paper left, and he writes and he writes until his hands bleed, every word a silent prayer to something- Michael, God, the fucking Zombie Lord, _anything._ He can’t move anymore, there’s nothing left in his stomach to be sick about, stop stop stopstopstopstopppp-

o0o0o0o

“I’m not entirely sure you’re not a zombie.” Lindsay offers from the couch, playing lazily with her half-brown hair. It’s less playing and more bemoaning it’s bedraggled state, really.

“Huh?”

“You haven't taken that beanie off in three days.“

“Shut the hell up.” He pulls it down even tighter self-consciously. “My hair is just as bad as yours.”

“Hey!” She halfheartedly chucks a pillow at him. “What are you saying?”

“Just yesterday you were begging me to try to find a Walmart-”

“Michael, I swear I’ll dye that mop rainbow in the night-”

He grabs the pillow she threw at him and tackles her off the couch, scrabbling on the floor for a second before she presses him down with her elbow.

“Pinned ya.”

“Fuck you, Nala.”

Lindsay rolls off and collapses on his lap when he sits up. “You’re as grumpy as Joe.”

“Did you- did you just compare me to a cat?”

“Dude, you are a cat.” She starts counting things off on her fingers. “Irritable, sleepy, annoying, dangerous- you have a fucking machete, Michael Jones. You are the most feline human I’ve ever seen.”

“Is that why you like me?” He’s bantering because he’s got nothing else to do, really. Lindsay is a nebula in the vacant space that’s become his universe.

His mind starts drifting, bouncing from Lindsay to Gavin and back again, dropping out zombies and populating the dark with the dead. Lindsay starts talking vaguely in the background of his thoughts, but it’s not much of anything.

“Do you want to go find a car?” This is a conversation they’ve had twenty times, a hundred. Every car here had been drained of its gas by someone who hadn’t locked themselves in their office for a month after the apocalypse begins. It’s something to do, that’s all. He can only look for his friends for so long before realizing the only way he might actually find them is through a fucking accident.

“We could catch a couple on the way.” Lindsay isn’t really warning him about it, just stating fact.

Then they go. And there are streets and worn-out buildings and a handful of corpses, not all that much, and then there is _everything._

“Jesus dicks.” Lindsay picks a brilliant opportunity to quote Geoff Ramsey, stepping over the seven thousandth zombie corpse. “What happened here, horde mode?”

“No fucking kidding.” Michael starts twirling his machete again. There’s a whole lot of dead here; he keeps expecting one to get back up. Hell, he’d like just one to break the monotony of body-body-body-body- _jackpot._

“C’mere, ya bastard.” he growls happily, and then his brain processes the mane of sandy hair on the zombie’s meal, the long tan hand sticking off to the side, and his brain jacks off the gears entirely.

“No-stop! YOU GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!” He has never felt so angry before, not with Ryan’s body or Ray’s or anyone elses, the rage setting fire to his veins in an uncontrollable wildfire-

(lindsay, sprinting behind him, face set tight as she sinks a full clip into the black-haired zombie eating its fill)

“Gav? Gavin? Come on, buddy. I made it, I found you.” He sinks to his knees, the anger gone as suddenly as it was there, and there is a vortex where his heart used to be. He wants to cry out, to scream into something, but he is floating in an empty space where nothing can break his heart anymore. Everything has just stopped.

“I-I made it. I came home.”

(behind him, lindsay letting out a choked sob as she sees the face of what she shot, collapsing against the alley wall with her head in her hands)

He’s been gone for a while now. Even Michael can see that.

Michael sweeps the overgrown brown tangle out of his blank eyes before he closes them, trying his hardest not to cry, failing, giving in- his hands finds a lump in Gavin’s jacket pocket, and he unfolds the last, reddish piece of paper he’ll ever read-

_I SHOT JACK_

_nonononononononono_

_come home ~~i love you~~ i love you_

There is more, pages and pages more, but it’s unintelligible, shaky.

Michael folds the whole thing back up and sticks it between Gavin’s hands. Gets up.

“What do we do now?” Lindsay has barely a voice left to speak. She doesn’t mention what she’s found. She doesn’t need to tell him. Gavin would never run away from Geoff.

“I don’t know.” No matter how many times he says those words, they don’t get any easier.

Lindsay takes his hand. Her jacket is as red as her hair now.

“Will you stay with me?” she asks, genuinely unsure of the answer.

He needs her.

He thinks maybe he could love her.

“I’ve got no one else to run to.” he answers, just as honestly.

And they go on.

****  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> woah? what's this? i'm back from the grave and writing stuff for a brand new fandom? what.  
> this was written in a fivehour crunch period. i apologize for any emotional trauma i've probably caused. whoopshit.


End file.
